After Kayla left, Summer was even more paranoid than she had been before. All of the things he had done, the lives he had ruined, the things he had made her do, it was all for entertainment? It was a motive she couldn’t even fathom to understand, proving Kayla’s words right. She might have been better off not knowing anything.

  Moping wasn’t getting her anywhere. Summer reluctantly pulled out her phone, relieved to see no new messages from Ned. She quickly selected a more familiar contact and sent a quick message.

  “I’m ready to talk whenever you are. Wanna meet up?”

  As always, Ashton was prompt to reply when he was available.

  “Where?”

  That was a good question. Summer didn’t want to be here any longer. The apartment felt like a prison with unseen eyes watching her every room. She carefully opened her door and looked around, spotting Ashton descending the stairs from the second floor. “Your place?” she called out to him once their eyes met, “Mine is… I just don’t trust it right now.”

  “Is that one of the things you are going to explain?” he asked.

  “It is,” Summer promised.

  Luckily he didn’t question it and invited her inside. She didn’t start explaining anything until the door was firmly closed, the curtains pulled shut, and every device closed or turned off except for her phone. She still wasn’t quite sure what his power was, but she didn’t want to take any risks. Unfortunately, she couldn’t explain without showing him the evidence, the texts on her phone.

  “He’s watching me,” Summer told him, her voice shaky. It wasn’t until she heard the tramble that she realized how out of sorts she really was, and it only made her want to break down more. “I don’t know how, exactly, but he has been watching me all day. Here.”

  She handed him her phone, open to the screen with all of the messages before she could think too hard about what she was doing. It was terrifying to watch him read them with the only change in his expression being the growing tension in his eyebrows. Finally, he passed it back to her, but his response was far from anything she had expected.

  “Would you like to know the real reason I ended up in the facilities?” Ashton asked instead of addressing the texts, “I know Harper didn’t tell you.”

  Summer’s breath caught. “If this is about Ned, you don’t have to tell me. I won’t ever ask him about it,” she explained quickly, her words practically tumbling over each other.

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  "I won't deny that he has something to do with my decision," Ashton admitted, "but it is not because I feel threatened. When I saw those messages I realized that I want you to know, Summer. If you are not ready to learn, that is fine. You have already learned plenty of my secrets today."

  If she was being completely honest, Summer was dying to know what kind of secret Ashton had been hiding so carefully. At the same time, she was scared. Nothing she had learned so far had changed anything, but what if this did? The one thing Summer feared more than anything else was for him to tell her that everything they shared had been fake from the start. That he had no feelings for her but had allowed her to cling to him because she was a useful cover of some kind.

  "I want to know," she decided, "I need to know. I keep concocting these ideas in my head that I am sure are worse than the truth."

  Ashton considered her words for a few moments before nodding. It took him a few more moments before he spoke. “You know how everyone awakens their powers at a different time, right?” he asked. There was already a tremble in his voice, and his deep intake of breath was just as shaky. Summer had to stop herself from telling Ashton maybe she didn’t need to hear this story after all. “My powers manifested while I was very young. Too young to know anything about how powers work or what might happen if I get too upset. Too young to understand the sparkly little lights at my fingertips were dangerous.”

  Summer had a terrible feeling about where this was going. Before she knew it, her hand was on his as he drew in another shaky breath. “You don’t have to finish,” she told him, “I don’t need to know.”

  “No, I need to finish,” Ashton rejected immediately, “I need to face my past, just like you did with Maskz.”

  “Alright,” Summer gave in immediately, “Just take your time, then. I’m not in a rush.”

  He squeezed her hand slightly and closed his eyes. “I was too young, so I don’t actually remember,” he admitted, “but I saw the reports. There were so many stories going over the risk of babies and toddlers manifesting powers with pictures of the aftermath. All I dare to use now is a cute little shock, but back then I must have been upset, or maybe even excited. Something flammable must have been nearby, and things escalated from there. I don’t have any idea how I survived since I should have been in the heart of the fire where it was the hottest. I don’t even have any burns.”

  “Not a single burn?” Summer asked, surprised, “Are you sure some kind of miracle healer didn’t save you?”

  “I’m not,” Ashton admitted, “That’s the problem. The incident has everything to do with my past and my life, and I am not even allowed to see the case file. Everything I know is from old news articles filled with wild speculation painting me as some kind of demon child. I can’t really blame them. I killed my entire family in that fire, and it spread to the neighbors as well before it was put out.”

  “Do you think…” Summer stopped herself, glancing at her phone. No. She couldn’t say it. She shouldn’t have even thought it.

  Unfortunately, Ashton still caught onto her idea. “No. Even if he has the answers, we cannot ask him,” he growled, “Whatever his price is, neither of us can afford it.”

  “You’re right,” Summer agreed instantly, “I am going to block his contact and delete the conversation. We don’t need that temptation hanging over us.”